Sometimes the Earth has to truly shake to make you realize something simple.
When the earthquake hit the East Coast Tuesday, I first thought construction workers outside my office building had fired up the jackhammer again. Not so. Once I felt the rumbling, I immediately turned to Twitter. The tweets flowed within seconds. It was a surreal experience. Why?
It was the first big event that I participated in on Twitter. I tweeted a few times, and then started reading, consuming… I noticed something:
- Twitter fed me real time information after the quake.
- Facebook let me talk about it with close friends and family, and communicate with them that I was okay.
- Google Plus let me surf a wider network with deeper analysis and threaded comments.
I couldn’t get everything from one social media platform. That may not be earth shattering, but it’s worth thinking about.